Temple Coach John Chaney
"With so many teams doubling on Lynn [Greer], the only thing that can set him free is passng the ball to other players, and they keep moving it around until they get a good shot. We've been working on that. It's so hard sometimes to convince a kid that when two people play you, it's a tribute. Kids have a tendency to think that when two people cover you, 'I'll show 'em.' Well, you show them with your other skills, with your head, with your eyes. You see other people open, you give them the ball, not try to fight the guys doubling on you. I think it's taken him a while to come around to that."

"We've had a lot of players out, and Lynn hasn't been looking at the same faces....it's been one thing or the other. I don't know whether it's the kids today, but I've had more problems out of it this year than I've ever had in my life. I don't understand it, I really don't."

"[GW] is a team that wants to play fast. When you play a team like that, you have to make them go faster. So you just run at every shooter, and that forces them to drive. Sometimes when you drive in fast, you get a little blinded, but we end up with our big guys in foul trouble. We're recovering and running....That just leaves our big guys inside standing there, and they can't handle little people coming at them. That's how they pick up fouls, that's why they sat on the bench."

"[Chris] Monroe is as good a player as there is in the country, without question. He can hit outside and he can drive. You just can't stop him. He comes at you and in the air, he can slide over to the right or to the left. We don't have the big people that can handle that kind of 'now you see me, now you don't' people who move."

"Once you get the players back who are used to playing in rhythm, and together, that makes a difference. Four of the players in that group were in the Final 8. The only person who was missing from that group is Quincy Wadley. So you get 4 players back on the floor who are used to changes, and used to playing together...it makes a lot of difference. And we end up with greater floor balance because they don't get away with easy baskets at the other end...Playing the defense now is a lot better than it has been, but it's got to get a lot better because we've only played a couple of games with these kids."

"We're looking at just one game at a time, trying to improve. I've been so apprehensive, so skeptical about this team because we've had a guy in one day, and he's out the next day, a guy injured or his mother passes away or aunt passes away or kid has to go to a funeral...it just goes on and on and on. The big guy gets a groin pull, and then he gets another one. I can handle two groin pulls, but then you start suspecting them of being wimps...But Ron [Rollerson] has tried to work with two. And as much as I scream and holler at him, he's managed to carve out some space underneath, especially as we've had to play more difficult players."

[on winning 17 of 18 in the Smith Center]
"A lot of these kids know each other irrespective of where they come from. I think that they're catching us this year at a time when we're getting our players back. We've come in here with weaker teams and we've won. The zone has helped us a lot. We've played against a lot of teams that are strictly man, and when they see zone, they don't really like it. Teams don't like to play against zone, overall. That helps us a lot. Instead of you licking your chops, you get a little hesitant. We do it to protect our players."

GW Coach Karl Hobbs
[on playing against Temple's zone defense]
"If you look at the shots we got, they were open shots, but they didn't go down. I don't think their matchup affected us a whole lot. We missed a lot of good open looks and had too many turnovers."

"We did a good job of keeping them off the board and being aggressive ourselves. The two things that made the difference were our inability to make open shots in the 1st half and the turnovers."

"Because we can't match up to them man-to-man physically, we have to play a lot of different zones and keep changing defenses. They were able to make some shots, and some very good shots at that."

"It seems ironic that all the teams I look at, before they play us, they're playing great. They know they've got GW coming up, they start to play great. In all seriousness, though, Temple's getting a feel for their matchup defenses and understand their roles."

"David Hawkins is the difference maker, because it gives them another guy who can get 25 or 30 points. That's a nice luxury to have."

"When we play our two 'bigs'--Jaason Smith and Tamal Forchion--then we run Chris off of those screens. When we play Darnell Miller, who's more like a guard, we run what we call cutters, we get our guards cutting through. In the 2nd half, we felt like we had to play our 'bigs' a little bit because of all the pounding going on under the backboard and that allowed Chris to come of those screens. He made some terrific decisions off of those screens....After the first half, I told the team that I don't think we can win the game because Chris Monroe had only four shots. We can't win with Chris Monroe getting only four shots up in a half. They had to find a way to get more shots for him."

Jaason Smith
"I was just trying to have a good time out there. They're big, I just try to use my quickness and speed to get around them. I can't out-muscle them guys, they're just too big. But that doesn't mean I have to back down."

[on the crowd]
"When I'm starting to get fatigued and you can hear the crowd in the background chanting for you and want you to pull through, it gives you that extra little momentum to go a little harder to make that shot or grab that rebound. It made a big difference [during 2nd half GW's runs].

Chris Monroe
[on the crowd]
"It gives you a big boost when you're tired and somebody hits a 3, and they go wild. We just want to make sure they keep coming back because we need their support."